British and American Graves

The Battle of Guilford Courthouse was fought at the small North Carolina backcounty hamlet on Thursday, March 15, 1781. American Major General Nathanael Greene was defending the ground at Guilford Courthouse with an army of almost 4,500 American militia and Continentals. He was defeated by a much smaller British army of about 1,900 veteran regulars and German allies commanded by Lord Charles Cornwallis. After 2 1/2 hours of intense and often brutal fighting, Cornwallis forced his opponent to withdraw from the field. Greene's retreat preserved the strength of his army, but Cornwallis's frail victory was won at the cost of over 25% of his army. Guilford Courthouse proved to be the highwater mark of British military operations in the Revolutionary War. Weakened in his campaign against Greene, Cornwallis abandoned the Carolinas hoping for success in Virginia. At Yorktown, seven months after his victory at Guilford Courthouse, Lord Cornwallis would surrender to the combined American and French forces under General George Washington.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 8th, 2006 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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As the photographer for the above picture and a reenactment group devoted to preserving the memory and honoring our history, I take a special interest in this topic. While technically portraying the “wrong” side, our members feel that accurately showing the army our colonial ancestors were forced to stand up against gives deeper meaning to the hardships endured by both sides and the great obstacle faced by the patriots. This rag-tag group of soldiers eventually defeated the world’s best trained and best equipped army!

I encourage the readers of this blog to visit their local historical sites during the 225th anniversary celebrations of the American Revolution. What is sure to be a highlight is the 225th anniversary of the surrender at Yorktown in October. The Brigade of Guards will be participating in this event, just as the revolutionary era Brigade of Guards were at Yorktown.

I hope to make it down there for the Yorktown celebration. Some of my Revolutionary ancestors were there at that historic moment in time and also the Virginia Daughters of the Revolution has an on-going project of restoring the York Town Custom House which I would like to see. There are some pictures of it at this link: Yorktown Custom House. I hope that you will add any Flickr photos you have posted pertaining to our country’s War of Independence to The Revolution Flickred pool.

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All images here are used with permission via the flickr.com API and and are subject to copyright. The written text is copyrighted to this site's author, Edna Barney, unless otherwise attributed, and is subject to fair use.